Remember Silly Putty and how you could use it to lift and image from the Sunday comics? A blue goo from Hawaii wont lift ink, but it will peel radiation from contaminated surfaces.

The blue goo is called DeconGel, a liquid that can be painted or sprayed on a contaminated surface. It hardens and traps heavy metals, radioactive particles and more. Best of all, it can be easily peeled off and thrown away. Skai Ventures of Hawaii makes the gel and sent some to Japan as a goodwill measure. The cleanup crews absolutely love it.

Before the gel arrived, workers were literally scrubbing buildings using soap and water. Now they can paint everything blue, peel it off and move on. The DeconGel is still radioactive and needs to be disposed of properly, but peeling goo is so much better than getting on your hands and knees to scrub. [CNN Money via PopSci]